Mayapore
Mayapore was a village in Pankot, India. A rural farming community, the administrative and political matters were run by a Chieftain, and the town's spiritual matters were handled by a Shaman. The town was located in the northwest section of India and primarily built up with clay block houses. The village was several days' journey from New Delhi, when traveling by elephant. In the center of the town was a large boulder with a carved grotto that served as the resting place for the town's sacred stone, the Shiva Linga, one of the Sankara Stones. The shaman's house was across the town commons from the shrine. History Around 1935, Mayapore's Sankara Stone was taken by Mola Ram and the children of Mayapore were kidnapped to work as slaves in the diamond mines operated by the Thuggee cult, located under Pankot Palace. Ram then offered the villagers a choice: Abandon Shiva and begin worshipping Kali Ma and their children would be returned, but the villagers refused. Without the stone in its grotto in the middle of town, the town felt cursed, with local agriculture failing, water sources drying up, and the town's livestock dying. While rafting down the Yamuna River, Indiana Jones, Short Round, and Willie Scott were found by the shaman, Marhan, and brought to the town, where the villagers pleaded for help. Over a feast of the town's meager food resources, Marhan and the Chieftain explained their situation to Jones and his companions, believing they were the ones to retrieve the stolen stone and rescue the children. While Jones was more interested in the value of the stone, eventually the arrival of an escaped village child convinced him to help the village. The three left Mayapore on elephants next morning with some local guides, led by Sajnu, to take them to Pankot Palace. When Jones stopped the Thuggee cult at the Temple of Doom, and the children were liberated, they returned to Mayapore, where the villagers welcomed Jones, Scott, and Short Round as heroes. The jubilant townspeople, reunited with their children, gave Jones and his companions several gifts before they left. Behind the scenes The name Mayapore is fictional and was likely taken from Paul Scott's novel The Jewel in the Crown (1966), which is set in a city of the same name during the Japanese invasion of British India in 1942. Unlike in Temple of Doom, the Mayapore of the novel is not a small village but one of the major cities in its province, which is also fictional but never given a name; due to its geographic characteristics and names of people and places it's generally assumed to be located somewhere in Northern India, between Punjab and Bengal. The Jewel in the Crown is followed by three sequels that together make the so called "Raj Quartet". In the first of these sequels, The Day of the Scorpion (1968), there is also a middle-size town named Pankot that serves as headquarters of the British-Indian Army in the region. The now defunct IndianaJones.com Marshall College database erroneously named Mayapore as "Madripoor". Madripoor is a fictional, Southeast Asian island state in Marvel Comics' superhero universe. Appearances *''Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'' Sources * *''The Greatest Adventures of Indiana Jones'' *''The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones'' *''Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide'' Notes and references pl:Mayapore Category:Cities